ce of that in Drum or Donaghmore is at an end forever.

November has set in cold and stormy. It seems to Honor, nervous and
anxious as she is, that the wind never ceases day or night, and
sometimes its shrill moans make her feel as if she were going mad.

Her father is able to come down-stairs now, but he misses the boys, and
complains fretfully of the loneliness of the house.

One day Honor walks over to the rectory to see Belle Delorme. Belle is
in the drawing-room reading a yellow-bound novel, which she slips
dexterously out of sight at the sound of her visitor's voice.

Belle is not quite so piquant and dashing as she used to be, perhaps;
but if she has been fretting for Launce--as Honor thinks--she has
certainly lost none of her good looks in the process.

She looks up now with a smile as Honor enters.

"I was just going over to tell you the news, dear. I know you never
hear anything at Donaghmore."

"The news!" Honor falters, turning from white to crimson; her first
thought being of some new danger threatening Power Magill.

"Oh, it's nothing very wonderful--perhaps nothing that you will call
news after all!" Belle says hurriedly, seeing that swift blush and
understanding it. "It is just that Ross Mount is closed, and its
mistress has flown away to England. Sure they are saying now that she
has a husband over there, alive and well, a farmer somewhere in
Devonshire. Maybe she has gone back to him."

"Maybe she has," Honor assents coldly.

"And they are saying too," Belle goes on more gravely, and looking
anxiously at her friend, "that the two men who were with Power Magill
have got off to America. I'm sure I hope it is true!"

Honor says not a word. She is thinking of the man who is left a
homeless wanderer on his native mountains--an exile within sight of his
own walls!

"It's an awful pity about poor Power, isn't it, Honor? Sometimes I cry
my eyes red thinking of him," Belle goes on in her pretty plaintive
voice; "and I often think he must have gone with the rest to Donaghmore
to keep them in order. He couldn't have gone, you know, to--to do any
harm!"

Honor looks at her gratefully, and the words linger in her mind and
comfort her in some vague way during her long and lonely walk to
Donaghmore.

The sun has set as she enters the gates, and a mist which has crept up
from the river makes the wide empty space on her left, as she walks up
toward the house, look more like a lake than solid earth.